Moving quickly to strengthen the Section for Refugees and Migrants in the new Vatican department for the Promotion of Integral Human Development, Pope Francis has appointed as under secretaries a Canadian Jesuit, Michael Czerny, and an Italian member of the Scalabrini Fathers, Fabio Baggio. The Vatican announced the appointments on Dec. 14. Father Czerny emphasized that the department will work directly under the pope on what has become “one of the most important and urgent human phenomena of our times,” the movement of people across the globe. “There’s hardly a place on the planet which is not touched by this phenomenon,” he said. He described the role of the section for “refugees and migrants” as that of “accompanying” people on the move from war zones, poverty, economically depressed areas and ethnic zones, as well as addressing the xenophobia that is spreading in many countries. This new office “touches all the dimensions of human experience” of people who are on the move for whatever reason, he said.
Refugee Office
Syrian refugees arrive in early May at a camp on the border in Royashed, Jordan. (CNS photo/Jamal Nasrallah, EPA) 
Show Comments (
)
Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
The latest from america
Pope Leo said that if the teen “had come all the way to Rome, then (the pope) could come all the way to the hospital to see him.”
A Reflection for Tuesday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time, by Molly Cahill
As emergency workers searched for survivors and tried to recuperate the bodies of the dead, Pope Leo XIV offered his prayers for people impacted by the latest shipwreck of a migrant boat off the coast of Yemen.
The Archdiocese of Miami celebrated the first Mass for detainees at “Alligator Alcatraz,” the Trump administration’s controversial immigrant detention center in the Florida Everglades.